Vital Stats

19 September 2006

Hunting

I am collecting songs that are sung in different languages right now. In a sense, I am hunting these songs online, and from libraries, and from plenty of different sources as well.

The reason I am doing this is because I am teaching that class, yes, that class, that class I have mentioned to you earlier, way earlier, which deals with plenty of other languages. So, as a way of letting people, or in my case, students, get a feel of how a language sounds like, so I am gathering songs from different languages and cultures and playing it for them.

This initiative has already been started by another graduate student here, who already has about three audio CDs of foreign-language music.

It is not just about downloading the music, I also need the lyrics as well. That's why it is a bit hard. If there is an English translation of the lyrics, then that would be better, but if not, then just the original lyrics would suffice.

So far, we have Portuguese, Dutch, Spanish, Icelandic, Russian, Estonian, Turkish, Tuvan, Korean, Thai, Mandarin, Cantonese, Indonesian, Arabic, Hebrew, Zulu, Xhosa, Luritja, Oneida, and Tok Pisin. These were the original languages that I received from my fellow graduate student.

So, if any of you dear readers know of a place where I can download the music AND the original lyrics of a foreign song, preferably in a language that I haven't mentioned yet above, then please do tell me, I really appreciate it.